The Best Art I Saw in 2023
KQED Sarah Hotchkiss
December 5, 2023
"Most Transcendent Solo Show"
Rema Ghuloum, ‘4 is a Rainbow Line’
March 4–April 8, 2023
Stepping into a room of Rema Ghuloum’s large-scale paintings is like entering a prism. Rainbow shades spread luminously across her canvases, emanating out from central tangles to create otherworldly portals. In 4 is a Rainbow Line, the paintings’ scale (some nearly seven feet tall) made standing before them akin to worship — you could look up, down, all over, but you can never really get a sense of the whole. Like Seurat, Ghuloum uses a framing technique to create perceptual shifts along the edges of her paintings, encasing her canvas in thin strips of contrasting tones or dots of color. Looking elicited only pure awe and delight.
